Over the holidays, I had a truly minor epiphany.It started while I was wrapping presents. We've made it a point to buy wrapping paper with a high recycled content, which I really hate (it seems to tear every time it encounters the corner of a box). Mrs. R. uses paper gift bags sometimes -- the advantage being that no wrapping gets torn and the bag can be reused several times. The problem with paper gift bags is that after a relatively small number of uses, they start to look beat up. Hardly the packaging that says "best to you in this the happiest of seasons!"

Higher education needs a vertical search engine. This would be a great business opportunity, as a site that got higher ed search right would create a valuable platform for advertising. The value of a lecture capture banner ad would increase for anyone searching about lecture capture. Same with pay-per-click keywords. A vertical search in higher education would also keep readers on the site longer.

How much time do college students spend playing video games? I did some quick Googling this morning and was unable to come up with any recent numbers. (Can you do any better?)What I did find was that:According to a Harris Interactive 2007 survey, the average teen boy spends 18 hours per week playing video games, 10 more hours than his female counterparts.

As described last week, I entered college in the fall of 1970 with some trepidation. Recent exposure to a group of extremely ladylike women’s college alumnae had left me concerned that I would feel out of place and intimidated. A spread in Mademoiselle’s fall college issue, shot on my college’s campus and featuring students as models, didn’t ease my anxiety any.

Happy holidays to all our Inside Higher Ed readers, and many thanks for following the blog. The Churm family wishes you a restful and enjoyable semester break.--Oronte, Mrs. Churm, Starbuck, and Wolfie

As the family and I settle in for a much-needed Christmas break, I just want to thank my wise and worldly readers for helping me work through so many conundrums (conundra? conundrii? conundrae?) over the last few years. This year, I can say confidently that the lessons I learned on the blog -- what sets people off, how things get interpreted, etc. -- made me better at my day job. It finally started to sink in. Thank you for that.

All my bosses have been women. I should say, all my bosses in the world of learning technology. And this is not totally true, as up until recently my last boss was a guy. But by and large, through two institutions of higher education and one foray into the for-profit dot-com world of educational technology. my bosses have been women. I never really gave this any thought - as the gender of my bosses never seemed to be a salient variable in their leadership styles, abilities and skills.

A week from now, the presents will all be unwrapped, the Christmas cookies mostly eaten—and I'll be sitting in a hotel room with three of my colleagues, interviewing some fabulous job candidates. Between now and then, I'll have refamiliarized myself with my potential new colleagues' work, hosted a holiday party, given and received various gifts, read two or three books for a book award committee I'm on—